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The perpetual debate over whether someone should buy a new car or used car will never end but in honor of Earth Day this week I decided that what I am trying to do is reduce my carbon footprint. So how does buying a new car reduce my carbon footprint?

I purchased my first new car at age 25 and it was a gas guzzling SUV but I did so knowing that I would be getting married soon and hopefully starting a family. Flash forward 11 years later and I still owned that same SUV but it was time to move on to a new car as our family needs changed. So at age 36, I’ve now purchased a new vehicle which I will undoubtedly own for the next ten or eleven years.

At this rate, I will likely buy my next new vehicle at age 46 or 47, then a final one at age 57 or 58 which should last me till I’m 67 or 68. I don’t think I’ll be driving much beyond age 68 and I’m anticipating that cars in the future will likely last more than 10 years anyway so it may have a useful life beyond my own.

So if 10 million Americans purchased a new car today and vowed not to buy a new one for 10 years, I would imagine this would be better than 10 million people buying new cars every 3 to 5 years or used cars every 2 to 4 years.

There will be someone who will claim that buying used cars helps “recycle” them but I find this to be a little disingenuous. In an ideal world, a car that has been used for 10 years should be taken to a recycling center and have all the materials stripped and recycled. There is no point in continuing to operate a 10 year old car with inferior environmental controls and possible environmental hazard: leaky oil, bad gas caskets, etc.